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That fight on the bridge between Jaime and Brienne was one of the worst things I've seen in ages
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Apr 23, 2013 17:22
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 19:46 |
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Arnold of Soissons posted:Dumb question, but the problem is that they're all huge, right? Everyones rolling with bastard swords and greatswords even though they're mostly mounted. Come to think of it you don't see many lance armed cavalry either though.
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Apr 23, 2013 18:31
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I have read that cruciform is so prevalent because it allows the user to hook one finger over the cross, giving you more control over the blade. Particularly because the sword was mainly drawn after the charge, when a knights hand could be slippery from either sweat or blood.
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Apr 23, 2013 22:16
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Some people would certainly do this, but to treat it as universal, or even particularly common prior to the 15th century, is nonsense. There is very little iconographic evidence of such a practice, though what there is suggests it was more common in Rus' and the Islamic world than in the West. Still comparatively rare, of course. Having handled some complex-hilted 16th century swords, I could in one instance not even put my finger over the guard if I wanted to, because of the design of the hilt, and this was at a time when many swords accommodated such a technique.  so glad people like you post here to keep all us amateurs in check
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Apr 24, 2013 12:39
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veekie posted:That's what I said, kinda, full articulated plate grew from the simple solid pieces like breastplate, greaves, bracers and helmets to gradually expand coverage as they worked out how to join metal together without losing freedom of movement. Until they got there it's supplemented with leather and mail to get at least some protection. One plate of metal is not equal to another plate of metal. A forged of sheet metal from the classical world may look similar to a late medieval sheet of metal, but thats where the similarities end. Metallurgically, the late medieval sheet is way more technologically advanced. Over the centuries certain processes had been discovered that led to sheets of increased strength and flexibility. And making those sheets uniform in strength and flexibility was another challenge. Lorica segmentata looks more advanced when everyone else is using chain or bronze armours, but Roman metallurgy was typically rather crude, especially the mass produced for the army by slaves stuff. Think of fields of slaves manning bloomery furnaces, producing ingots of iron, not uniform in quality. This production method made it cheaper than chain armour. Thats basically the reason why chain armour was the most popular choice for 2000+ years, no other state could marshal the resources for mass production like that.
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Jun 18, 2013 17:26
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Did the mixture vary due to like local weather patterns or was it just a cultural thing?
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Jun 18, 2013 21:59
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GunganRevenge posted:I had a quick question myself, and more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. Strategic mobility?
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Jun 25, 2013 12:20
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I can only imagine them as being pragmatic warriors. When you gotta stab a dude you gotta stab a dude, blood taboo be dammed.
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Jun 29, 2013 19:59
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I'm pretty sure that slavery slips quite nicely into feudalism. Slavery and indentured servitude aren't that different anyway, so maybe over time it became quite un-christianly to call them "slaves", but they were essentially slaves? And the word "slavery" went on to mean exclusively chattel slavery?
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Jul 1, 2013 11:39
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Odobenidae posted:Irish Kerns never saw action outside of Ireland This isn't true, they were pretty common mercenaries throughout Northern Europe. Albrecht Durer drew this when he saw them in Nuremberg in the early 15th century. 
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Jul 5, 2013 23:22
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I thought there was no proof for the exodus ever actually happening?
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Jul 11, 2013 15:28
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tonberrytoby posted:So what about those slingers? Well, in the case of pre-Norman medieval Ireland, slings provided the principal form of long range missile fire. Archery seems to have disappeared in Ireland during pre-historic times, only to be reintroduced by the Vikings and "popularised" by the Normans. Gerarld of Wales, who wrote the chronicle Expungnatio Hibernica, relates the danger posed by the highly mobile native staff-slingers to the knights, and the need to always have archers at hand to reply with immediate and accurate return fire. So serious was that threat, that when discussing the way warfare should be conducted in Ireland, he stresses the constant need for archers to be combined with knighty formations. The archers use is to keep the Irish at bay during the swift, hit and run exchanges of Irish warfare. Gerarld notes the vulnerability of the mounted troops to the slingers, who usually attacked from ambush, or occasionally field fortifications. Security on the march was such a concern to the Normans (Norman forces getting destroyed on the march wasn't uncommon) that they changed their formations to include large numbers of both mounted and foot archers. The sling does seem to have fallen out of favour over time though, it seems that as a skirmishing weapon the bow is just superior. One advantage of the sling, the fact that ammo is everywhere, became less of a plus once native Irish boywers and fletchers become established, indeed most arrowhead finds in Ireland are of the armour-piercing bodkin type. EDIT: Heres a quote from Topographia Hibernica: Gerarld of Wales posted:But, they are armed with three kinds of weapons: namely, short spears and two darts; in which they follow the customs of the Basclenses (Basques); and they also carry heavy battle axes of iron, exceedingly well-wrought and tempered. These they borrowed from the Norwegians and Ostmen of when we shall speak hereafter. But in striking with the battle-axe they use only one hand, instead of both, clasping the haft firmly, and raising it above the head, so as to direct the blow with such force that neither the helmets which protect our head, nor the platting of the coat of mail which defends the rest of our bodies, can resist the stroke. Thus, it has happened in my own time, that one blow of the axe has cut off a knight's thigh, although it was encased in iron, the thigh and leg falling on one side of his horse, and the body of the dying horseman on the other. When other weapons fail, they hurl stones against the enemy in battle with such quickness and dexterity, that they do more execution than the slingers of any other nation. Rabhadh fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Aug 14, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 10:13
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Namarrgon posted:It is a shame we never saw horse slingers. If you could afford a horse why would you still be using a sling?
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Aug 14, 2013 15:32
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Namarrgon posted:Well it was definitely an empire, I'm not sure why Voltaire was disputing that. It was holy in the sense that it was strongly connected to the pope, so I'd give them that. It was originally crowned as successor to Rome by what is probably the second-best claim to Romanhood (the Papacy) so depending on how generous you feel you can give them that too. The Ottoman Empire has a much better claim, it conquered the actual Roman capital plus the Sultan took the title Emperor of Rome from the previous holder.
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Aug 15, 2013 12:19
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Yeah, the culture and religion (and capital) of Rome had changed many times in the past by the time the Ottomans turned up that the precedent had been set already.
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Aug 15, 2013 15:32
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Obdicut posted:The exact same 'who was the inheritor of Rome' conversation is going on in the Classical history thread. Hah I'm 5000 posts behind in that thread anyway.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:12
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Thought this 16th century picture book might be of interest here, its the Codice de Trajes, 1547. It shows Europeans in period costumes, lots of soldiers in there too. If anyone can recognise some of the less obvious place names, that'd be fantastic. Of particular interest to myself is the guy on the very last page, the Irish soldier with the fully plate armoured left arm. This isn't the only depiction of Irish dudes with just their left arms/hands armoured, showing that they made a concious choice to equip themselves in this manner as opposed to carrying a buckler. 
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Aug 18, 2013 23:41
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Are higher draw weight bows more or less reliable than lower draw weight bows? I was just wondering if a big 160 lb bow was put under much more stress than a smaller one, and might break sooner?
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Aug 19, 2013 20:15
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poo poo in the armour
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Aug 23, 2013 17:56
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Yep, Ireland operated under a "cattle economy" where wealth was measured by the number of cattle a lord kept, which were tended by groups of semi-nomadic herders. Together they were called called "creaghts". Being a semi-nomadic herder gives you have a whole load of time to practise your slingin' and javelin throwing. As for bows, there is evidence indicating that the bow had died out in Ireland some time in the early bronze age (seemingly due to the decline in the importance of hunting). I'd like to expand on this later but I should never have started replying to something while rushing out the door!
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Sep 25, 2013 10:40
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InspectorBloor posted:it makes the movement to nock the arrow more direct. Can you explain this part please? In my mind its a lot more straight-forward to nock when you grab the arrow at the rear.
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Sep 27, 2013 20:00
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Could there be a reason behind preventing the neck from moving? Maybe its a feature that helps prevent the neck from snapping back after a hit to the head like modern motorbike helmets?
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Nov 8, 2013 23:27
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You can build piece by piece but it'll never fit as well as a bespoke armour will. Just pretend you've looted all your armour!
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Nov 9, 2013 00:05
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This video on knights armour 1330 - 1450 is pretty interesting.
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Nov 13, 2013 11:34
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Ireland was a minor state with a shitton of monasteries--how much of the monks' writings survive? I'm talking about secular, day-to-day stuff rather than religious tracts. Alekanderu posted:This castle burning down in 1697 probably has a lot to do with that. Similiarily, the Shelling of the Four Courts destroyed a lot of the medieval Irish records.
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Nov 15, 2013 18:34
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oXDemosthenesXo posted:Libya means all of Africa right? Libya refers to all of North Africa past the Egyptian coast. They didn't know how far south the whole thing went so they assumed Libya was most of it.
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Nov 23, 2013 12:26
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:"ganked" "gankers" I love this.
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Dec 11, 2013 11:29
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bewbies posted:Even top quality armor won't last that long in an uncontrolled/field environment, so most of the high quality Roman stuff was on the scrap heap by the time you're talking about. The stuff during this era was made by mediocre craftsmen using mediocre metal, much worse in quality than what the Romans were fielding at their peak (though similar to what they fielded, in large part, towards the end of the empire). I'd like to dispute the point about equipment being much worse quality. There was certainly less equipment to go around since the Roman mass production systems collapsed, but that system of mass production relied on hundreds of slaves working at bloomery furnaces producing things to a standard pattern. No doubt the Romans had their master craftsmen too, but to say quality went down is absolutely false. You only have to look at the Sutton Hoo find to see that. Metalworking actually improved since the collapse of the Roman Empire with the discovery of new process of tempering and quenching, until you have the long medieval swords we're all familiar with. It wasn't possible to produce them in Romans times. The Celtic longsword is an interesting experiment in creating a long sword before the technology was fully there to enable it in it's most efficient form. These blades were just soft enough to bend in plane (by design), if they'd been made harder they would have shattered on impact instead of just bending. They were also easily bent back into shape without losing the edge. Needless to say, this leaves you at a disadvantage but still better than shattering all over the place!
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Dec 15, 2013 17:30
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Any instances of non-stirruped cavalry fighting stirruped cavalry? Irish cavalry fought without stirrups until the early 17th century. They often came off worse in straight up fights against their Norman/Anglo Irish/English enemies but they had a much bigger problem than simply not having stirrups, their horses were small mountain ponies while their enemies rode destriers.   
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Dec 31, 2013 13:35
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Obdicut posted:To me, you seem to be taking the very odd position that the stirrup and tree were really not a big deal. Can you explain their widespread adoption by cavalry forces? Is your contention that the tree-and-stirrups strategic effects (less fatigue for the horses, allowing quicker training) are much more important than the greater range of motion and other effects on weapon usage, and that the latter are just a bonus, or what? I think his argument is that while the stirrup and tree were important on an individual horseman basis, they didn't change things as much as was once believed. People were still charging into combat and stabbin' lads before the advent of stirrup and tree. Personally I believe the horses themselves (and subsequently their availability) were more important to the development of cavalry over the centuries. In my previous post I mentioned how Irish horsemen rode small mountain ponies without stirrups or even proper saddles (they rode on what are described as "pads"). The Norman lords who conquered part of the country even adopted this style of riding and combat after assimilating.
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Dec 31, 2013 17:20
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I don't believe their use was very much different than a 2 handed axe, both weapons were used fairly interchangeably by gallowglass. As for being anti-pike? Gallowglass couldn't break a pike formation at the Battle of Monasternenagh in 1579 (they frontally charged and got slaughtered about 3 times), and by the end of the century O'Neill was re-equipping his gallowglass as pikemen anyway.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:51
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Some interesting pictures from a book thought lost after WW2. edit: These pictures are on a guys facebook, if you can't see them I'll upload them to imgur later.
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Feb 3, 2014 08:15
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A medieval King probably doesn't even want a whole load of conscripted peasants hanging around, these are the people the whole medieval economy depends on. Better to spend that money on some professional mercenaries. I believe this is why scutage becomes a thing in place of personal service.
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Feb 9, 2014 22:33
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Anyone have a few words on the make up of Saladin's army?
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Mar 6, 2014 08:39
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This border reiver stuff is very interesting, its like a little bit of medieval Ireland was transported to the Scottish border. Which I guess it was, since hobilars were recruited heavily from Ireland to serve in Edward's Scottish wars (never enough were available though), a fair few of them seem to have stayed too as they show up in castle garrisons. I don't want to jump to conclusions but was this the start of the border reiver tradition?
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Apr 5, 2014 17:20
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Sort of. Reiving is never shown to have been a foreign importation, and the use of hardy ponies for riding is as old in Scotland as it is in Ireland. Hell, it is on one of these ponies that Robert Bruce rode at Bannockburn. I actually have a vague memory of reading that Robert Bruce's horse at Bannockburn was imported from Ireland. Cheers for the information, going to see if I can pick up that book on the reivers.
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Apr 7, 2014 21:29
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It's almost the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf! Does anyone have any hypothesises on how an army of guys reputedly lacking in metal armour is supposed to defeat an army of guys who make great use of metallic armour in a stand up fight between shield walls?!
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Apr 13, 2014 23:50
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That wiki about the battle is pretty out of touch with the most recent thinking. I've seen 5000 men in total thrown around as the agreed upon figure. There is no mention of a the battle taking place on the beach, just that an unusually high neep tide caused the beached longboats to float off into the bay, preventing the fleeing Vikings from escaping and leading to a slaughter there. What my question is really about is the importance of armour is in shield wall combat, and how an army that is largely unarmoured is able to go toe to toe with one which is much better armoured. This of course leads to a couple more questions, of which we can generally take our pick because the battlefield it self has never been found and the sources are not too descriptive on how things really went down. Most of this is going to be a fun little game of conjecture. 1. The Vikings are often referred to as "the foreigners of the armour" by the Irish, but there is probably a note of Gaelic martial pride in this (those cowards need to be dressed in iron etc). The Irish almost certainly had some form of organic armour that they were equipping themselves with, padded or boiled leather or both. So this armour is either good enough to stand in the shield wall and take your blows, or metal armour isn't as big a factor as we tend to assume. 2. The Vikings and the Irish are similarly equipped. Its 1014, and the Irish have adapted to the Viking threat very well. Viking equipment has been adopted by the Irish at this point in time, sources describe axes among the Irish troops, a weapon that was introduced by the Vikings and will go on to be described as the veritable "national weapon of the Irish" by the time of the Norman invasion a hundred and fifty years later. So the nobles leading the Irish army and a portion of their household troops are wearing metallic armour, but are probably outnumbered by the professional Vikings contingents from Orkney and Mann. Personally I feel like a mix between the two is most likely. Boru had defeated most of the kingdoms of Ireland at this point, including numerous forces of Vikings. His household troops and their Munster levies are the best on the island and used to winning, and form the core of his army. I can imagine these household troops being heavily armed and armoured, either through trade (the Viking town of Limerick was long under his control), or loot (the aforementioned defeated Vikings or other Irish kings), but the levies not so much. And it's those levies that I have a problem with. They're probably the worst thing you could put in a shield wall and expect to hold. Agility has always been the preferred defence of the Irish warrior. But they did hold, and then they won.
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Apr 14, 2014 15:39
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The Tain comes to us through 3 texts, the earliest of which is from the late 11th/early 12th century, though given Ireland's monastic tradition its almost certainly a copy of an earlier work again. Cuchulainn's armour is described as "twenty-seven tunics of waxed skin (mistranslation, most likely linen), pleated and pressed together, and fastened with strings and straps against his clear skin...". "Over them he put on his heroric deep battle-belt of stiff, tough, tanned leather.....covering him from his narrow waist to the thickness of his armpit; that he wore to repel spears or spikes, javelins, lances and arrows..." "Then he drew his silk-smooth apron....up to the softness of his belly. Over this silky skin-like apron he put on a dark apron of well-softened black leather....with a battle-belt of cowhide to hold it."
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Apr 15, 2014 11:33
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I had always heard that the repeating crossbow was a more of a civilian home defence weapon and fairly useless in actual warfare.
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Apr 28, 2014 21:03
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